LAPD Shutters Predictive Policing During Shutdown
May 7, 2020
Police departments are not immune to the economic impact of this pandemic. We learn the Los Angeles Police Department is shutting down its predictive policing program, at least for now, in TechDirt’s write-up, “LAPD’s Failed Predictive Policing Program the Latest COVID-19 Victim.” Writer Tim Cushing makes it perfectly clear he has never been a fan of the analytics approach to law enforcement:
“For the most part, predictive policing relies on garbage data generated by garbage cops, turning years of biased policing into ‘actionable intel’ by laundering it through a bunch of proprietary algorithms. More than half a decade ago, early-ish adopters were expressing skepticism about the tech’s ability to suss out the next crime wave. For millions of dollars less, average cops could have pointed out hot crime spots on a map based on where they’d made arrests, while still coming nothing close to the reasonable suspicion needed to declare nearly everyone in a high crime area a criminal suspect. The Los Angeles Police Department’s history with the tech seems to indicate it should have dumped it years ago. The department has been using some form of the tech since 2007, but all it seems to be able to do is waste limited law enforcement resources to violate the rights of Los Angeles residents. The only explanations for the LAPD’s continued use of this failed experiment are the sunk cost fallacy and its occasional use as a scapegoat for the department’s biased policing.”
Now, though, an April 15 memo from the LAPD declares the department is ceasing to use the PredPol software immediately due to COVID-19 related financial constraints. As one might suppose, Cushing hopes the software will remain off the table once the shutdown is lifted. Hey, anything is possible.
Cynthia Murrell, May 7, 2020
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